Send your question to Umbra!

Q. Dear Umbra,

What is the greenest way to dispose of pet waste? Scoop and flush, or bag and throw in the trash?

Jenifer M.
Vienna

A. Dearest Jenifer,

Flush or toss?The greenest way to dispose of pet waste is to dispose of your pet, I suppose. No pet, no waste! But barring that revolutionary scheme, a few other options present themselves.

You have not said what kind of pet you have, but judging by your reference to scooping, I am going to assume it is a cat. The time-tested advice for felines is to bag and throw away the soiled litter, including poo. If you are on a municipal sewer line, you may be able to flush the feces, but you should check with your town; if you have a septic tank, it's not advised. By the way, when you choose kitty litter, don't buy a brand that contains clay -- you might want to consult our product tester for the best non-clay options.

If you are scooping the waste of a dog or other animal, the same truth applies: bagging is best. It's gross to think about all that pet waste rotting in landfills, but it's a teeny bit less gross than imagining it seeping into our waterways or contaminating our gardens with its pathogens. (Some people compost pet waste, but it must be done very, very carefully -- here are some tips.)

Of course, we hear occasionally about efforts to turn pet poop into power -- I fur-vently hope "they" keep working on this idea, and I'm also very glad that is not my line of work.

Ferretly,
Umbra

Q. Dear Umbra,

I hear a lot about clean coal technology. Is it true that we can use coal in a "clean" way? I don't believe it. Can you please explain this?

Anand
Manhattan

A. Dearest Anand,

You know the expression "go with your gut"? Methinks you should. You don't believe coal can be used in a clean way, and you are right.

It is accurate, however, to say that coal can be used in a cleaner way than it traditionally has. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu and others point out that, since coal is abundant, relatively cheap, and unlikely to disappear from our energy mix any time soon, we should find cleaner ways of feeding our addiction. These include turning coal into a gas before burning it, and capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions. Here's a fun and colorful clean-coal overview from the BBC.

Will these "cleaner" methods prevent coal from harming our health and polluting our air and water? Will they stop coal companies from blowing the tops off of mountains? Will they keep miners from being trapped and killed underground? Not likely. There's a reason my fellow Grist writer David Roberts calls coal the "enemy of the human race." It is an outmoded, dangerous source of power. We should all lobby our utilities and our representatives to give us better, safer, healthier options.

I wrote a bit more about the clean-coal conundrum last year; you can find my answer here. I also recommend you swing on over to the Department of Energy to get a sense of their plans, and visit iLoveMountains.org for a real, human understanding of where coal actually comes from.

Sequesterly,
Umbra

Q. Hi Umbra,

I am a college student and I'm really involved in and passionate about making my university more sustainable. One of the issues that I am trying to address is our current disposal of mattresses. Every year, my university "disposes" of 1,200 mattresses by incinerating them for energy (people think this is awesome and sustainable -- I wish I was kidding). So, I have been spending endless nights researching a safer alternative for this herd of mattresses. I can't recycle them because it's too damn expensive (about $20,000/yr). I can't donate them because they are ripped and flat -- who wants a holey pancake mattress? I can't Freecycle them because bedbugs are a huge issue in my area and I don't think I can find 1,200 people who want college student mattresses (think about what you did on your mattress back in the day...). So I am asking, I am BEGGING, you for help!

Mattress Maiden
Boston, Mass.

A. Dearest MM,

What I did on my mattress back in the day ... let's see, I slept on it. I read a lot of Aldo Leopold. I sorted my collection of fallen leaves by size and hue. What do you do on your mattress?

Never mind. The real question is, why is it so hard to dispose of mattresses in this country? I'm afraid, dear MM, you have outlined exactly the problem: Mattresses can rarely be donated, especially as bedbug concerns (real or imagined) increase. They take up too much space in landfills, so much in fact that some municipalities will no longer accept them. And though recycling programs are cropping up, they are few, far between, and can be fiscally frustrating.

Still, I think recycling is the best bet. Interestingly, Massachusetts is home to one of the nation's few mattress recyclers, and another outfit is venturing into New England soon. It's amazing what happens to your mattress: the wood is chipped for energy, the steel springs recycled, the cotton and foam used for insulation or other textile needs. I'm not sure which of the many fine Beantown schools you attend, but I see that Tufts and MIT both recycle mattresses. Those schools are dealing with a much smaller quantity than you mention, but you might contact them to find out how they've sprung over any obstacles. (You might also see if your school is retiring too many mattresses too soon.)

Another possible resource: Some schools rely on the help of the Institutional Recycling Network -- you might contact them as well, if you haven't already.

Above all else, it seems to me that the burning of these mattresses is a misguided plan. For one thing, mattresses are treated with chemicals to make them resistant to fire -- so once they are coaxed to go up in smoke, they likely release all sorts of nasty fumes. That's way more squirm-inducing than thinking about the damages that might have resulted from certain collegiate activities.

Stain removerly,
Umbra

Related Links:

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Ask Umbra’s video advice on composting

Not that we haven't been informed -- that's the message from an incredible year of new books on climate destabilization, dirty energy policies, bogus Big Coal campaigns and a vibrant anti-coal movement, a growing coalfield resistance and the tragedy of mountaintop removal, and the still big possibility of renewable energy sources to refresh our survival chances on the planet. Here are some of my favorites from 2009 -- the list is by no means definitive, and I apologize to the all the great authors I have overlooked (Adam Siegel also has a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/a-siegel/energy-bookshelf-ten-more_b_358040.html">great list</a>.) <a href="http://stormsofmygrandchildren.com/"><em>Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity</em></a>, by James Hansen The world's great sage and fearless climatologist, James Hansen has played a heroic role in explaining the complexities of global warming to the US Congress, world leaders, and the American public over the past three decades. In his first book, Hansen issues a stunning clarion call for action that should be required reading by all American citizens. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Ghosts-John-Griswold/dp/1877655635/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259452192&sr=1-1"><em>Democracy of Ghosts</em></a> by <a href="http://www.orontechurm.com/journal/my_novel_she_will_be_published/">John Griswold</a> A brilliant and lyrical historical novel, <em>Democracy of Ghost</em> conjures the affairs behind one of the most violent labor disputes in American history -- the brutal killing of 21 scabs and coal miners at a strip mine in southern Illinois in 1921. In some ways a horrifying cautionary tale for today's mining conflicts in the coalfields, <em>Democracy of Ghosts</em> explores the entangled love affairs between couples caught up in the great coal mining strike that ultimately shattered a region, and turned one of the most radical communities into a social pariah. Griswold's narrative is riveting. This original novel deserves as large an audience as possible -- pass the word. <img alt="2009-11-28-Picture2.png" src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-11-28-Picture2.png" width="271" height="413" /> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Hope-Front-Lines-Against/dp/0615314384/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259449507&sr=1-2"><em>Climate Hope: On the Frontlines of the Fight Against Coal</em></a>, by Ted Nace One of the amazing brains and strategists behind the anti-coal movement, CoalSwarm director Ted Nace has written a powerful chronicle of the grassroots movements to stop the construction of coal-fired plants, and halt mountaintop removal operations in Appalachia. <a href="http://coalswarm.typepad.com/coalswarm/">CoalSwarm</a> is one of the great engines of information; Nace's book is a stunning tribute to the citizen movements afoot that will ultimately push our country to a coal free future. <a href="http://browseinside.harpercollins.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061353253"><em>Power Trip</em></a> by Amanda Little As the beloved and trusted <a href="http://www.grist.org/">Grist</a> correspondent on energy issues, Little has embarked on a journey to the center of the fossil fuel world. Her book is an indispensable look into the historical roots of coal and oil, and the emergence of the clean energy future. Here's her trailer: <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/4qD9PTZmzGA&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/4qD9PTZmzGA&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> <a href="http://plunderingappalachia.org/"><em>Plundering Appalachia: The Tragedy of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining</em></a> This book is mind-blowing. If any book can change the most cold-hearted Big Coal view about the nightmare of mountaintop removal, <em>Plundering Appalachia</em> and its take-no-prisoners giant photos and essays would be the best shot. Produced by the Foundation for Deep Ecology, <em>Plundering Appalachia</em> includes a series of informative and heartfelt essays by coalfield residents and experts on this human rights and environmental disaster. <img alt="2009-11-29-Picture3.png" src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-11-29-Picture3.png" width="287" height="361" /> <a href="https://secure2.convio.net/sierra/site/Ecommerce/31112901?VIEW_PRODUCT=true&product_id=7421&store_id=1621"><em>Coal Country: Rising Up Against Mountaintop Removal</em></a> The book companion to the provocative new film documentary, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/icoal-countryi-premiere-b_b_225341.html">Coal Country</a>, this anthology stands as one of the most eloquent and effective collections against the practice of mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia. Published by the <a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/Coal/">Sierra Club</a>, and edited by long-time activists and writers Shirley Stewart Burns, Mari-Lynn Evans, and Silas House, this far-reaching book will remain a powerful indictment against one of our nation's most egregious dirty energy policies. <a href="http://www.kentuckypress.com/viewbook.cfm?ID=1543&Group=1"><em>Something's Rising</em></a> and <a href="http://www.motesbooks.com/downstream.html"><em>We All Live Downstream</em></a> While half of the destruction of mountaintop removal has taken place in Kentucky, its horrific reality is often overlooked by the media. These two brilliant collections present the views and stories of Kentuckians on the frontlines, along with some of the best writers on the subject. Edited by Kentucky writers and activists Silas House and Jason Howard, these books are inspiring reminders of the resiliency and resistance of Appalachians in the face of brutal outside coal companies. <a href="http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Law/EnvironmentalLaw/?view=usa&ci=9780195393538"><em>Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse</em></a> by David Orr One of the great scholars in the climate change and clean energy debate, Orr's new book sets out a challenging and hopeful agenda for real change in how we reshape our nation, our energy policies, and ultimately our personal lives, for the long haul battle against climate destabilization. <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage.aspx?isbn=9780312556198&m_type=4&m_contentid=17089#cmscontent"><em>Tree Spiker</em></a> by Mike Roselle Truly an American original, and a stranger to fear, Mike Roselle has been a powerful force of nature for decades, and his founding activism behind Earth Firth, the <a href="http://ran.org/">Rainforest Action Network</a>, and untold campaigns to save the wilderness in the West -- and now, his role in inspiring the <a href="http://climategroundzero.org/">civil disobedience campaigns to halt mountaintop removal</a> in Appalachia -- are the stuff of legends. This funny and illuminating book is Roselle's testament to a good life on the frontlines of change. <a href="http://www.coffeehousepress.org/coalmountainelementary.asp"><em>Coal Mountain Elementary</em></a> by Mark Nowak Working class hero and poet Nowak gives a lyrical account of the voices of coal mining tragedies in Sago, West Virginia and China, in this breakthrough collection of poetry. <img alt="2009-11-29-Picture5.png" src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-11-29-Picture5.png" width="287" height="361" /> <a href="http://www.nrdc.org/commonsense/"><em>Clean Energy Common Sense: An American Call to Action on Global Climate Change</em></a> by Frances Beinecke NRDC President <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frances-beinecke/starting-an-clean-energy_b_348379.html">Frances Beinecke</a> has just released a call to action, in the tradition of Tom Paine's Common Sense. <a href="http://www.richardheinberg.com/Blackout.html"><em>Blackout: Coal, Climate, and the Last Energy Crisis </em></a>by Richard Heinberg As Grist reporter David Roberts <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2009-07-27-blackout-heinberg-on-dwindling-coal-reserves-and-the-siren-song-/">noted</a>, Heinberg's analysis of peak coal and the looming climate crisis is the "scariest" book in years. And, of course, two other amazing books I have recently reviewed: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/climate-cover-up-blockbus_b_328589.html"><em>Climate Cover-Up</em></a> by James Hoggan <img alt="2009-11-29-ClimateCoverUp.jpg" src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-11-29-ClimateCoverUp.jpg" width="287" height="361" /> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/unblock-the-climate-debat_b_294636.html"><em>What's the Worst That Could Happen</em>,</a> by Greg Craven. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7e10ZNpogv4&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7e10ZNpogv4&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> Please list your favorite clean energy and climate change books below!

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Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Know a college student? As this holiday weekend rolls in and many of you might have college kids coming back to your home with huge bags full of dirty laundry, we’ve got something for you.

Know a college student with a dirty room? If you're nodding your head 'yes' right now, send them this link so they can be part of our quest to find the dirtiest room in the nation (or you – the friends or parents - can take a photo and enter them yourself!).

We're betting the dirtiest room we find, no matter how filthy, is still not as dirty as the coal that powers many of our nation's campuses.

The owner of the dirtiest room -- dorm, fraternity, or apartment -- will win a free, green cleaning service from the Sierra Club.

This is another step in our Too Dirty for College Campaign, which I've written about before. We've already had folks tell university presidents that it's time to move beyond coal and power our schools with 100 percent clean-energy solutions.

Now we're proving that no matter how dirty college gets, it's not as dirty as coal.

Your room (or your kid's or friend's room) might be completely filthy, but it's still not as bad as toxic pollution, mountaintop removal and global warming. Coal is dirty, dangerous and far too old to be fueling our nation's college campuses. It poisons people's water when we drag it out of our mountains, it fills our air with asthma and cancer-causing toxins, and then continues its dirty legacy when the waste is dumped in unlined ponds. We can do better and our schools must lead the way.

So show us that dirty room. To enter, go to this "2dirty4college" photo contest group, and join our online community. You can then upload your image by clicking "Add a photo" on the left-hand side of the page.

Again, the owner of the dirtiest room will win a free, green cleaning service from the Sierra Club. So, call that ex-boyfriend, pay a special visit to your friend's fraternity or call those gals living in the group house next door with the funky smell, and get them to enter today for the glory of being the dirtiest in country. (And a free clean up!)

Help us find the dirtiest room and show that while college can get pretty nasty, coal is still far, far worse.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

If the Obama administration is unwilling or unable to stop the massive environmental destruction of historic mountain ranges and essential drinking water for a relatively tiny amount of coal, can we honestly believe they will be able to phase out coal emissions at the level necessary to stop climate change?        --Dr. James Hansen, June 22, 2009

Welcome to Copenhagen, U.S.A.

On Dec. 7, the opening day of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Americans from around the country will converge for a historic protest at climate change ground zero for our nation -- the Appalachian coalfields.

At the same time 65 heads of state and other world leaders and environmental regulators view a special Google Earth tour of the importance of Coal River Mountain in West Virginia at the Copenhagen conference, leading anti-mountaintop removal activists and citizens groups -- with Robert Kennedy, Jr. reportedly in their ranks -- will demand an end to mountaintop removal mining on Coal River Mountain and across Appalachia.

Their target: The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, in Charleston, W.Va., the embarrassingly inept and Big Coal-ridden state agency that has overseen one of the greatest environmental and climate change disasters in American history: Mountaintop removal's destruction over 1.2 million acres of hardwood forests in our nation's carbon sink of Appalachia.

The American citizens at climate change ground zero will not be alone in the coalfields.

As a wave of climate change protests rock London on Dec. 5, and throughout the world on the Dec. 12 Global Day of Action, the citizens groups and coal mining communities descending on the Big Coal-strangled halls of governmental incompetence are drawing a line in the sand at Coal River Mountain. 

Site of the Coal River Wind Project, the most symbolic clean energy project in the nation, Coal River Mountain is the last intact mountain in the historic range, and an area that has been plundered by mountaintop removal and left in ruins. Despite regulatory violations, Massey Energy began clear cutting the lush hardwood forests and setting off blasts for a massive 6,600 acre mountaintop removal operation on Coal River Mountain last month.

And just why should Coal River Mountain -- and the Appalachian coalfields -- be considered climate change ground zero for the U.S.?

The carbon connection: As an advisor on the Presidential Climate Action Project, and a leading environmental scholar and entrepreneur, David Orr has noted, "To permanently destroy millions of acres of Appalachia in order to extract maybe twenty years of coal is not just stupid; it is a derangement at a scale for which we as yet do not have adequate words, let alone the good sense and the laws to stop it." In a major paper, The Carbon Connection, Orr recounted a trip to a mountaintop removal site in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia and its link to our climate fate:

More complete accounting of the costs of coal would also include the rising tide of damage and insurance claims attributable to climate change. Some say that if we don't burn coal the economy will collapse and we will all have to go back to the caves. But with wind and solar power growing by more than 25 percent per year and the technology of energy efficiency advancing rapidly, we have good options that make burning coal unnecessary. And before long, we will wish that we had not destroyed so much of the capacity of the Appalachian forests and soils to absorb the carbon that makes for bigger storms and more severe heat waves and droughts.

Coal River Mountain is a tipping point in climate change policy: As NASA climatologist James Hansen has pointed out for years, "we must move rapidly to carbon-free energy to avoid handing our children a planet that has passed climate tipping points." Calling mountaintop removal "an undeniably catastrophic way of mining," Hansen issued a personal plea to President Obama this summer to halt the blasting of Coal River Mountain, as part of a larger vision for the rapid phase-out of coal emissions now:

The coal barons at Massey Energy are not only destroying Coal River Mountain, but leading the anti-climate change propaganda campaign: As head of the fourth largest coal producer, and a gleeful mountaintop removal detonator, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship and his company's notorious denial of climate change and bizarre global warming-denying shows are the stuff of bad vaudeville. But Blankenship's wrath in Appalachia, and especially in the Coal River Valley, has not only resulted in record penalties for mining violations, and the devastation of the region, but placed him in the forefront of Big Coal's refusal to accept any compromises in cap 'n trade legislation. In a recent interview on stopping climate change legislation in the Senate, Blankenship referred to "the hoax and the Ponzi scheme of global warming."

Seventy foot coal slurry tidal wave: Blasting at Coal River Mountain risks a climate change catastrophe: Blasting within a football field of the class "C" Brushy Fork impoundment, one of the largest and potentially weakest coal slurry impoundments in the nation, Massey Energy is engaging in a blatant act of aggression against besieged coalfield residents. According to their own evacuation reports, a break in the coal slurry impoundment would result in certain injury or death for the nearly 1,000 residents downslope in the valley. Some area residents would have less than 15 minutes to escape a 72-foot tidal wave of coal slurry.

Coal River Mountain, like Copenhagen, is a battle over a clean energy or a regulated dirty energy future: As a study last year by Downstream Strategies noted, an industrial wind farm on Coal River Mountain would provide more jobs, tax revenues, and electricity over the long-term than the current mountaintop removal operation, which will exhaust the coal seams within 17 years. The study concluded:

The showdown at Copenhagen, U.S.A. is on: Dec. 7, 2 p.m., Charleston, W.Va.

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Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

Pollution from coal is not only unhealthy for the environment -- it also hurts the human body and contributes to four of the five leading causes of death in the U.S.: heart disease, cancer, stroke and chronic respiratory disease.

So concludes a new assessment of coal's health effects from Physicians for Social Responsibility. Titled "Coal's Assault on Human Health," the report examines the cumulative harm that coal pollution inflicts on the respiratory, cardiovascular and nervous systems. It also considers coal's contribution to global warming and the health implications of that.

"Detrimental health effects are associated with every aspect of coal's life cycle, including mining, hauling, preparation at the power plant, combustion, and the disposal of post-combustion wastes," the introduction states.

The report examines that entire life cycle, from the high fatal injury rate and chronic health problems suffered by coal miners, to the dust and water pollution that mining inflicts on nearby communities, to how the health-damaging chemicals used in washing coal make their way into water supplies. It also accounts for the enormous amount of pollution emitted by the trucks and trains that haul coal, and the threat presented by the more than 500 coal ash dumps sites across the United States.

It finds that the burning phase of coal's life-cycle takes the greatest toll of all on human health:

Coal combustion releases a combination of toxic chemicals into the environment and contributes significantly to global warming. Coal combustion releases sulfur dioxide, particulate matter (PM), nitrogen oxides, mercury, and dozens of other substances known to be hazardous to human health. Coal combustion contributes to smog through the release of oxides of nitrogen, which react with volatile organic compounds in the presence of sunlight to produce ground-level ozone, the primary ingredient in smog.

The report's findings have important implications for the public health future of the United States in general -- and the South in particular. According to the Sierra Club's database on proposed new coal plants, there are a total of 55 active coal plant projects underway in the U.S., and almost half of those -- 27 in all -- are slated for Southern states*:

* 2 in Arkansas (Hempstead and Plum Point II);
* 1 in Florida (Seminole);
* 2 in Georgia (Longleaf and Washington County Power Station);
* 8 in Kentucky (Black Stallion, Cash Creek, Coal Synthetics, Estill County Energy Partners, NewGas Energy Center, Smith, Spurlock, Trimble);
* 2 in Louisiana (Big Cajun I and Big Cajun II Unit 4);
* 1 in Mississippi (Mississippi Power Kemper IGCC);
* 1 in North Carolina (Cliffside);
* 7 in Texas (Coleto Creek, Diamond Alternative Energy, Las Brisas, Limestone III, Sandy Creek, Tenaska and White Stallion);
* 2 in Virginia (Dominion and Old Dominion Electric Cooperative); and
* 1 in West Virginia (TransGas Development's Coal-to-Liquid Plant).

These plants should not be built, according to PSR. In fact, the report's policy recommendations call for no new construction of coal-fired power plants so as to avoid increasing health-endangering emissions of carbon dioxide and toxic air pollutants.

The report also calls for cutting carbon dioxide emissions "as deeply and as swiftly as possible" through legislation establishing hard caps on global warming pollution and through the Clean Air Act. And it urges the U.S. to develop its capacity to generate electricity from clean, safe and renewable sources so existing coal-fired plants can be phased out without a net loss of jobs or compromising the nation's energy supply.

"These steps compromise a medically defensible energy policy: one that takes into account the public health impacts of coal while meeting our need for energy," PSR concludes.

* Facing South counts among the Southern states AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, TX, VA and WV.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Wednesday and Thursday of this week are big days if you live in Arlington, Virginia, or Chicago, Illinois. Those are the two days of public hearings on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “Big Polluters” rule. But of course, this whole issue is huge whether you live in Virginia, Illinois, or anywhere else in the U.S. – it affects everyone.

Right now only a handful of pollution sources, including coal-fired power plants, are responsible for more than half of all of the global warming pollution in the United States. Cleaning these up is a large step towards stopping global warming, so EPA is proposing a new rule to start cleaning up these Big Polluters under the Clean Air Act. By targeting the worst offenders, the Big Polluters rule is an important step that will cut global warming pollution while still helping our economy grow.

That’s why we’ve helped organize crowds of folks to turn out to the Wednesday and Thursday hearings: These mega-polluters should be held responsible for their share. (You can also check in on the hearings by following the #bigpolluters hashtag on twitter. We’ll have lots of folks tweeting from inside the hearing rooms)

This rule will bring the most bang for the buck—resulting in real pollution reductions and helping spur growth and development of clean energy technologies.

And forget the nay-sayers spreading false information about the government trying to regulate churches, hospitals, schools and Dunkin Donuts (why do they always bring up Dunkin Donuts?): The rule would only apply to offenders emitting at least 25,000 tons of greenhouse gases each year, exempting small businesses, churches and apartment buildings, while addressing the bulk of the nation’s global warming pollution.

Under the Big Polluters rule, big new facilities that would create large amounts of global warming pollution—like new coal plants—would have to install technology to clean up their carbon emissions. These safeguards would also be required for large existing facilities when they are expanded or modified.

Again, this proposed EPA rule uses the time-tested Clean Air Act, which has already succeeded at cleaning up other sorts of pollution all over the country, to help control global warming pollution. 

To provide a little more detail about EPA’s proposal: The Clean Air Act requires all new ‘major emitting facilities’ – big sources – to use the ‘best available control technology’ to limit their emissions.  Existing polluters that make big physical changes to their plants and increase their emissions in the process have to update their controls to meet this standard, too. 

This best available control technology requirement has been used for decades to reduce many other types of air pollution. EPA must consider the “energy, environmental, and economic impacts” before deciding on the right controls for any particular plant.  There are a number of simple, proven methods for controlling global warming pollution, including using energy more efficiently, replacing old equipment, or burning cleaner fuels.

The sources that EPA will focus on under this rule already have decades of experience with this process.  Having used best available control technology to reduce many other types of pollution, they have the engineering expertise to work with EPA and community groups to select appropriate, cost-effective controls.

Global warming pollution controls will also reduce emissions of other pollutants, including those that cause smog, heart attacks, and lung disease. 

By focusing on these big sources, EPA is spending its resources wisely.  Although global warming pollution comes from many places, EPA can cut down on the lion’s share by taking on the largest sources first. 

The Big Polluters Rule marks one of EPA’s most important commitments yet to moving us towards a clean energy economy and away from dirty power sources like coal.

If you can’t make it in person to the hearings Wednesday and Thursday, you can still send in your comments to EPA on this important rule – simply use our Big Polluters website:

And don’t forget to follow along with the #bigpolluters hashtag on Twitter for tweets from inside the hearing.

For a recap of how these hearings went, be sure to check in on my colleague Greg Haegele’s column later this week for photos and a wrap-up.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

I think at the Obama administration we all believe that everybody has the right to live in a clean, healthy environment and a prosperous economy. And we're working towards that. We need to reach out to communities whose voices have been ignored and where there are disproportional impacts, whether it's environmental protection or promoting [a] clean energy economy. -- Nancy Sutley interview, July 31, 2009

Question of the week: Given all of their agencies' beautiful rhethoric about "reaching out to communities whose voices have been ignored and where there are disproportional impacts," why haven't EPA chief Lisa Jackson and CEQ administrator Nancy Sutley found three hours in their schedules to visit a mountaintop removal site -- the most egregious environmental tragedy in their administration?

Will they ever visit Coal River Mountain in West Virginia -- the mountaintop removal battleground for clean energy and a healthy environment?

The EPA announced "environmental justice showcases" in 10 communities today, to "highlight the disproportionate environmental burdens placed on low-income and minority communities all across the nation."  Not a single community in the entire Appalachian region was included.

On June 11, in responding to the national outcry over the tragedy of mountaintop removal mining, the Obama administration promised it would, "engage the public through outreach events in the Appalachian region to help inform the development of Federal policy."

And the EPA, the Council on Environmental Quality and the Department of Interior jointly announced their intent to "work in coordination with appropriate regional, state, and local entities to help diversify and strengthen the Appalachian regional economy and promote the health and welfare of Appalachian communities."

Five months later, where is the Obama administration and its promises to visit the besieged coalfields of Appalachia?

EPA chief Lisa Jackson flew 1,687 miles to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado this week to speak to a high school in Denver, but she -- or any top level of her staff -- has yet to visit a nearby mountaintop removal mine in Appalachia. (In May, Jackson flew 2,001 miles to visit the less controversial Black Thunder Coal Mine in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming.)

In the meantime: An estimated 1.6 billion pounds of ammonium nitrate fuel explosives have ripped across the lush Appalachia mountains, as part of mountaintop removal operations, since the Obama administration took power in January.

Appalachian mountaintop removal.Photo courtesy farukahmet via Flickr 1.6 billion pounds of explosives.

Since Jackson began her career with the EPA in the mid-1980s, over 500 mountains have been blown up, 1.2 million acres of hardwood forests have been clear cut, an estimated 2,000 miles of waterways have been jammed with mining waste, and untold numbers of American citizens have been forced to relocate, through mountaintop removal operations.

Horrific violations of the Clean Water Act have reached a state of emergency in the coalfields -- and the front page of the New York Times.

And while affected Appalachian coalfield residents have made numerous visits to Washington, D.C. to plead for environmental justice and their lives in a virtual war zone, and while over 20,000 petitions were hand delivered to the EPA headquarters last month calling for a single visit to the region, there is still no word, no announcement, no plans for a visit by Lisa Jackson and Nancy Sutley.

Where's the love?

Nancy Sutley believes environmental justice is a civil rights issue, and she traveled over 1,000 miles to New Orleans last month to assure American citizens concerned about coastal restoration and levee safety issues that: "We've heard before and we've heard here again today the need for urgency and we certainly understand the need for urgency."

But Nancy Sutley -- or any top level of her staff -- has never visited a mountaintop removal site in Appalachia where American citizens are literally dying from coal slurry-contaminated drinking water, and have been forced out of their homes from reckless blasting, fly rock, and coal dust.

While the EPA made an important step to actually apply the law with greater scrutiny of mountaintop removal permits in September, only one federal agency has made any attempt to keep the Obama administration's promise to reach out to Appalachia, in Appalachia: The Army Corps of Engineers, and they held quite possibly the most disorganized, chaotic, and violation-ridden hearing in West Virginia in the recent history of the coalfields; residents are still calling for an investigation by the Department of Justice.

And where are those green jobs "to help diversify and strengthen the Appalachian regional economy"?

While small efforts have been made for some reforestation projects, the coal barons and the pitiful West Virginia politicians all know that mountaintop removal has plundered the Appalachian economy, beleaguered the region in eternal costs, and wiped out any diversified economic development and even stopped a tiny tiny initiative for green jobs in West Virginia from passing through the state legislature.

Faced with a declining domestic and world coal demand, the out-of-state global warming-denying union-busting coal barons (CEOs from Virginia, Texas, and St. Louis) held a bizarre seance with faltering West Virginia politicians last week and whipped them into an unfounded frenzy about job losses from environmental regulations.

And that is why mountaintop removal blasting began last month on historic Coal River Mountain, less than a football field away from a dangerous and weak coal slurry impoundment -- to wipe out any attempt at clean energy and a healthy environment. The out-of-state coal barons want to stop the Coal River Wind Project, which would provide more jobs, more energy, more tax revenues, and a healthy environment for the coalfield residents.

Will Lisa Jackson and Nancy Sutley ever find three hours in their schedules to see mountaintop removal first hand and visit Coal River Mountain?

Do they truly believe, as Sutley declared this summer: " ... everybody has the right to live in a clean, healthy environment and a prosperous economy. And we're working towards that. We need to reach out to communities whose voices have been ignored and where there are disproportional impacts, whether it's environmental protection or promoting [a] clean energy economy"?

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What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

I'm involved in an ongoing email debate over the wisdom of "clean coal" -- that is, coal power plants that capture and sequester their carbon dioxide emissions. It will eventually be published on a State Dept. website, and then in Grist. In the meantime, a preview of sorts.

A frequent argument one hears in favor of a heavy focus on carbon sequestration goes like this: fossil fuels are fantastic energy carriers, dense, portable, and cheap. People will burn them up no matter what. So we might as well figure out a way to make them low-carbon by sequestering their emissions. It's a way to buy time as we figure out other clean energy options.

It's a seductive argument. It sounds easier to convince people to clean up what they're already doing than to persuade them to do something entirely different.

But I don't think it holds up under scrutiny. It trades on the implicit notion that sequestering CO2 is just a matter of tweaking our current power system a bit -- a quick, low-cost twist on business-as-usual. That would be easier than shutting dirty power plants down and building a new infrastructure based on renewables, efficiency, and intelligent grids.

It's wrong, though:

1. Sequestration is not a low-cost alternative. CCS is expensive! Nobody has any idea how much it will cost once it has been scaled up to the point that it's capturing the bulk of CO2 emissions from the bulk of the world's coal power plants. Most current estimates, though, are that it adds about 30-40% on to the cost of building a new plant and up to 50-60% to the cost of running existing pulverized coal plants. That is not a low-cost alternative to higher-cost renewables. It's one higher-cost option among others.

2. Sequestration is not modification of existing infrastructure. It's new infrastructure, and a lot of it. As Vaclav Smil pointed out in a widely cited 2006 paper in Nature (PDF), capturing and sequestering just 10% of global CO2 emissions would require the creation of an infrastructure that would handle as much as or more volume than that extracted by the global oil industry (which has been built up over a century). Sequestering the 40% of global emissions for which coal plants are responsible would mean infrastructure four times as extensive as the entire global oil industry's. That's not some tweak on what we've got; it's a mind-bogglingly enormous new industrial project that wouldn't be up and commercialized until, on the most optimistic projections, 2025-2030.

So the Argument from Fossil Fuels (as I will now take to calling it) needs to be clarified. If the point is that the countries of the world are going to keep burning fossil fuels because they want the cheapest possible power no matter what, then we're doomed. Period. No country that prioritizes the cheapest energy in the short-term is going to opt for CCS -- it's not cheap, or short-term.

If, on the other hand, the argument is that countries will opt for the low-carbon energy path that represents the easiest, cheapest, and fastest alternative to dirty fossil fuels, well, then, now we're really having a discussion. Now the argument for CCS has to show that it's easier, cheaper, and faster than efficiency and renewables. I don't think it can win that argument.

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Cross-posted from the Wonk Room.

Thursday, 14 Democratic senators affirmed their allegiance to the profits of polluting industry at the expense of the health and jobs of their constituents. In a letter to Senate leaders, a bloc of senators with powerful coal interests in their states called for "fair emissions allowances in climate change legislation." Their definition of "fair," unfortunately, turns out to be full taxpayer subsidies for global warming polluters. They call for the free allocation of pollution permits to electric utilities to be distributed "fully based on emissions":

We urge you to ensure that emission allowances allocated to the electricity sector -- and thus, electricity consumers -- be fully based on emissions as the appropriate and equitable way to provide transition assistance in a greenhouse gas-regulated economy.

The signatories on the letter defending coal-heavy polluters are Senators Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Roland Burris (D-Ill.), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Mark Udall (D-Colo), Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

Their demand is a basic violation of a core principle of environmental economics -- that companies should pay based on their pollution. The transition-period formula in the House bill, Waxman-Markey, and the current Senate legislation, Kerry-Boxer, at least distributes the free permits based 50 percent on electricity production. This formula was negotiated with the U.S. Climate Action Partnership and has received the endorsement of the Edison Electric Institute, the largest lobbying organization for the nation's utilities. In contrast, President Obama called for a full auction of pollution permits to avoid rewarding polluters at the taxpayers' expense, instead dedicating the revenues to creating jobs, lowering taxes on the middle class, and building a clean energy economy.

The argument that the most "fair and effective," "appropriate and equitable" way to help the constituents of their states is to increase subsidies to coal-powered utilities is frankly absurd.

Read the letter:

November 12, 2009

Dear Senators Reid, Boxer, Baucus, and Kerry,

As the Senate formulates and debates energy and climate change legislation, it is clear that revamping our energy systems with alternative energy resources and technologies will be fundamental to our strategy for achieving energy security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A transition of this magnitude will take years to accomplish and will incorporate major changes to the way we produce and use energy. Both the House-passed "American Clean Energy and Security Act" (H.R. 2454) and the recently introduced "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act" (S. 1733) recognize the importance of helping individuals and firms by alleviating potential financial impacts as this transition takes place. This assistance, in the form of the allocation of greenhouse gas emission allowances, is an important tool for protecting consumers and businesses as we move to adopt new energy systems and decrease greenhouse gas emissions. To be fair and effective, any legislation must equitably allocate these allowances to individuals and across states and regions and economic sectors.

The House bill falls short of that equitable distribution goal with its formula for allocating allowances to local distribution companies based 50 percent on emissions and 50 percent on sales. Unfortunately, the Senate bill currently under consideration includes the same 50/50 allocation provision. Under the proposed 50/50 formula, utilities that are more coal dependent will need to purchase even more allowances than they would have if all allowances were allocated based on emissions, and those higher costs will be passed on to their customers. Meanwhile, many utilities with relatively lesser emissions will receive sufficient allowances to completely cover their initial requirements. Thus, their customers will experience no price increases resulting from the legislation.

We believe it is essential that we strive to formulate legislation that equitably distributes transition assistance across individuals, as well as states and regions and economic sectors. We urge you to ensure that emission allowances allocated to the electricity sector -- and thus, electricity consumers -- be fully based on emissions as the appropriate and equitable way to provide transition assistance in a greenhouse gas-regulated economy.

We thank you for your efforts to build consensus on the critical issue of energy and climate legislation. The change we recommend would contribute to a more balanced and equitable bill for the Senate's consideration, and a better strategy for America.

Sincerely,

Senator Tom Harkin Senator Al Franken Senator Roland Burris Senator Byron Dorgan Senator Herb Kohl Senator Russell Feingold Senator Kent Conrad Senator Michael Bennet Senator Amy Klobuchar Senator Mark Udall Senator Robert Byrd Senator Cark Levin Senator Debbie Stabenow Senator Sherrod Brown

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This Friday, Nov. 13, marks the 100th anniversary of the Cherry Mine Disaster in Illinois, when an estimated 259 coal miners lost their lives to fire and the buildup of "black damp" or toxic gases. The St. Paul Coal Company Mine in Cherry was hailed by its consulting engineer as the "safest mine in the world."

While we take time to reflect on the heroic sacrifices of coal miners and their families this week, the Cherry Mine Disaster remains a haunting reminder of the secret legacy of child labor in our coal mines -- and its unconscionable use today.

Big Coal front groups like to peddle their "Coal is Cool" curriculum in schools -- including a bizarre "Mars Invasion" project to help children play with the planning of coal camps on Mars -- and disingenuous coal coloring books.

The Kid's "Coal" Site at the Illinois Department of Commerce does not mention the Cherry Mine Disaster or child labor in the Illinois coal mines -- but it does erroneously tell children that devastating strip mining and reclamation "is returning the land to the way it was or better than before mining" and that burned coal does not affect the environment, because "Technologies were developed to remove these chemicals from coal before, during, and after it is burned. These technologies are called clean-coal technologies."

An estimated 27,000 children worked in American coal mines during the "period of disasters" in Cherry, despite child labor laws and age limits. Their horrific experiences as breaker boys have been chronicled by the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Among the Cherry Mine dead were four children, who had been hired illegally. An estimated 470 children became orphans in Cherry. In Trapped: The 1909 Cherry Mine Disaster, author Karen Tintori notes, "the St. Paul Coal Company pled guilty to nine counts of child labor law violations and was fined a total of $630."

That's $70 a child -- the worth of a child laborer in the coal mines in 1909. And today?

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, child labor in coal mines continues in Pakistan, Mongolia, Nepal, Indonesia, and Colombia, where government agencies estimate that thousands of children are working in illegal mines. Last year, a Chinese blogger exposed the abuse of homeless children as coal haulers in China. In 2007, the BBC reported on child labor in coal mines of southern Kyrgyzstan near uranium dumps.

A British documentary crew recently aired a film, "Hell on Earth," about the deathly conditions for children and families as coal scavengers and miners in northern India:

Child labor in the coal mines is not the only abuse of children from irresponsible coal companies. As the Miami Herald reported last week, legal representatives on behalf of villagers in the Dominican Republic have filed a suit against the Virginia-based AES company for birth defects related to coal ash dumping.

Here's the video:

A report in the NY Times last month blew the cover on Clean Water Act violations by coal companies, and chronicled the impact of coal slurry on the health of children in Prenter, W.Va:

And today, the AP is reporting that the School Board Authority in West Virginia is now hedging on seeking funds for Marsh Fork Elementary School in West Virginia, which infamously sits below a massive coal slurry impoundment, and where kids play near toxic coal dust silos. Here's a clip on retired coal miner Ed Wiley about the Marsh Fork school situation:

May we never forget the coal miners and children at the Cherry Mine Disaster.

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This post was co-written by Kim Teplitzky, field coordinator for the Sierra Student Coalition

Today at Penn State University, dozens of students, faculty, and community members rallied in front of university’s coal plant, calling on the university to move beyond coal to clean energy solutions.

Many find it strange that the Nittany Lions still rely on coal despite the university’s other strides toward clean energy. “The biggest surprise to people is how much we rely on coal,” said sophomore Rose Monahan, a leader with Penn State Beyond Coal. “They know we use it, but they didn’t know that we get 80% of our energy from coal-fired power plants.”

And yet Penn State has made some progress. For example, Penn State is a member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Sustainability Partnership Program, which has the school committed to reducing its global warming pollution 17% by 2012.

University clean energy student groups have praised the administration for its commitment to sustainability and for initiatives the school has already undertaken to reduce carbon emissions.  According to the College Sustainability Report Card, Penn State purchases 20% of its power from renewable sources.

Students and faculty are now calling on the school to commit to developing a plan and timeline for phasing out the school’s 80-year-old on-campus coal plant. 

Thankfully, there is some progress on that end at Penn State. University President Graham Spanier has agreed to meet student leaders this semester to discuss the topic. 

Penn State Geography Professor Brent Yarnal, who has spearheaded regional and national greenhouse gas inventories and climate change impact assessments, also spoke at today’s rally and praised the students for understanding the urgency of climate change and for wanting their school to lead the movement.

We agree: With some of the world’s leading climate scientists on faculty and a history of student activism, Penn State should be a leader for Pennsylvania and all the large, public university systems in the nation.

Monahan echoed that sentiment.

“People are finally really start to talk about (clean energy),” said Monahan. “They realize how big an issue it’s going to be. Penn State is worried about carbon emissions, but we could definitely go bigger.

Learn more about how coal is Too Dirty For College

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Here's the damage from a coal ash spill in Tennessee.A civil lawsuit filed last week in state court in Delaware charges Arlington, Va.-based AES Corp. -- one of the world's largest power companies -- with illegally dumping 160 million pounds of toxic coal ash waste onto beaches in the Caribbean nation of the Dominican Republic, leading to serious health problems for nearby residents.

Filed by a team of attorneys from law firms in New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, the suit alleges that between 2003 and 2004, AES Corp. and its subsidiaries dumped 100 million pounds of coal ash on the beach near the small village of Arroyo Barril and another 60 million pounds in the Port of Manzanillo near Montecristi -- and that serious health problems resulted:

Since the dumping, babies have been born with severe birth defects including missing limbs, missing organs, cranial malformations, and gastrointestinal deformities. Some of these children have died as a result of their injuries. A failed Siamese twin with two heads died shortly after birth. Many women have suffered miscarriages at various stages of their pregnancies. Today, in addition to the severe birth defects, men, women, and children of this proud and struggling community continue to suffer with respiratory illnesses and skin rashes.

The attorneys say half of the 42 nearby residents tested had unsafe blood levels of arsenic, a major contaminant of concern in coal ash. There is evidence that inhaled or ingested arsenic can injure the fetus.

A byproduct of burning coal to generate electricity, coal ash contains dangerous levels of known poisons that also include beryllium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel, and vanadium. Workers who handle coal ash at power plants typically wear respirators and other protective equipment.

The coal ash dumped in the Dominican Republic came from AES's coal-fired power plant in Guayama, Puerto Rico. According to the complaint, authorities there allowed AES to build the plant in 2002 only under the condition that most of the ash generated at the plant was deposited somewhere other than Puerto Rico. The company allegedly chose dumping the waste onto beaches in the Dominican Republic -- where some 30 percent of citizens live in poverty -- as the cheapest alternative.

The lawsuit also claims that AES and its partners misrepresented to the Dominican government the toxicity of the coal ash and how it would be handled. In 2004, that government found the AES dumping to be in violation of Dominican law as well as the international Basel Convention on hazardous wastes and pursued criminal and civil actions against AES and other responsible parties.

The Miami Herald reports that it was a contractor from Delray Beach, Fla. -- Roger C. Fina -- who hauled the coal ash to the Dominican Republic and dumped it on the beaches:

"He brings this rock ash into the country without any kind of controls or anything. A good portion of it fell to the sea,'' said Andrés Chalas, the Dominican Republic's top environmental prosecutor. "They got permissions to bring it in and said it was to do renovations of the port, but we investigated and there was no such project, not at Public Works or the Port Authority.''

Fina claims that the ash was supposed to be turned into asphalt and was never meant to sit on the beach for two years. The paper reports that after he and AES were sued by the Dominican government, the company paid $6 million to clean up the site, though contamination still remains. Fina says the case has ruined his life and left him out of work.

The lawsuit filed last week on behalf of the injured Dominicans seeks damages from AES and its companies for the human toll caused by the illegal dumping. It also seeks to compel AES to provide a comprehensive medical monitoring program for the plaintiffs during their lifetimes.

A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.

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Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

While one did sing,

the other did shout,

And the angel unlocked the door.

He had the keys to the kingdom, Lord

Any CD album that begins with a haunting Uzbek-influenced trumpet and percussion backup on Ralph Stanley's gospel classic, "Keys to the Kingdom," and ends with Willie Nelson strumming a stunningly unaffected and heartfelt acoustic version of "Blowin' in the Wind," goes straight to platinum on my charts.

As a companion CD to the provocative new film, Coal Country, the wildly eclectic Coal Country Music CD hits the stores today with a blockbuster list of Nashville's alt-country scene like John Prine, Kathy Mattea, Jason and the Scorchers, folk and bluegrass legends Ralph Stanley, Jean Ritchie, Tom T. Hall and Gillian Welch, rockers like Natalie Merchant and Bonnie Raitt, and a few other surprises -- as in, Grammy Award-klezmer band The Klezmatics and their beautiful rendition of Woody Guthrie's "Heaven."

Produced by Heartwood hero Andy Mahler and Grammy Award-nominated guitarist Jason Wilber, who contributes a powerful performance of "In Her Veins," the Coal Country Music CD is a breathtaking tribute to the wide range of music that has emerged out of Appalachia.

And all for an amazing cause: Proceeds from the CD sales will go to non-profit citizens organizations working to stop the ravages of mountaintop removal and to launch a clean energy future for Appalachia -- the birthplace of country music, and an important crossroads for blues, jazz, and rock.

The release of the CD also coincides with the nationwide house parties this week for the Coal Country film, which will air on Planet Green on Nov. 14. The CD album includes liner notes from Ashley Judd and Woody Harrelson, along with the producers' message:

Along with classics from John Prine -- whose "Paradise" remains a haunting soundtrack for today's strip mining impact on families and heritage -- and the beloved Grammy-Award singer Kathy Mattea, Coal Country Music includes some of the finest singer-songwriters working today on Nashville's better half. With an unaffected ease, singer Celeste Krenz performs a wonderful version of "Big Coal River," yearning for the days of "feeling free and running clean." Alt-country legends Jason and the Scorchers rock the album with "Beat on the Mountain," a new release forthcoming in 2010, that recounts a coal miner's dilemma, "caught between the mountain and the mine." With the hip sway of a young Rickie Lee Jones, Schuyler Fisk (Sissey Spacek's daughter) combines country riffs with a folk pop ease on "It's a Long Walk Home."

Backed by her amazingly tight band, pop star Natalie Merchant contributes a chilling version of the labor classic, "Which Side Are You On?" which previously appeared on the breakthrough "Music of Coal" album.

Popular Appalachian activists Public Outcry, along with traditional Appalachian singers and Coal Country filmmaker Philis Geller, round off the album with several ballads and topical songs.

A special program on the Coal Country Music CD will take place on Nov. 14, on Jason Wilber's In Search of a Song program.

In a previously unrecorded version of "Blowin' in the Wind," Willie Nelson concludes the album with a reminder of the tragedy of mountaintop removal that continues to ravage Appalachia, and the hope of clean energy -- and wind farms -- at risk today on Coal River Mountain in West Virginia.

And how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind.

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A stone marker in Rugby, N.D. identifies the town as the "Geographic Center of the North American Continent." No marker identifies the state as one of America's top two or three in wind-power potential. Yet North Dakota's vast expanses and steady winds endow it with the capacity to generate more than half as much electricity as all 50 states currently produce from all sources combined, according to a recent Harvard study of U.S. wind energy potential.

Indeed, that potential, equivalent to 2.6 trillion kilowatt-hours annually, is almost 100 times greater than the current output of the state's coal- and lignite-fired generators. And while tapping a goodly share of that capability would require a great many giant turbines -- as many as one per several square miles across the state -- each tower would only occupy a small footprint, leaving the land largely intact for agriculture and other complementary uses. Jobs erecting the towers and servicing the turbines would be another plus.

So how come wind power accounts for just 2 percent (XLS) of North Dakota's electricity generation -- barely matching wind's national share? One obvious reason is lack of transmission capability to reach load centers. But another is the extraordinary cheapness of coal.

In 2007 (the last year for which we have data), the coal and lignite burned in North Dakota power plants cost just under a dollar per million Btu, on average. Picture 12 cent a gallon gasoline, and you get a sense of just how inexpensive that coal is, in equivalent-energy terms.

That's why coal accounts for 93 percent of the state's power production, and why North Dakota is able to export almost two kilowatt-hours of electricity for every one it consumes -- mining, delivering, and burning the stuff is dirt cheap.

Transitioning from coal to wind-powered electricity is probably the biggest single step we can take to dial back our CO2 emissions, and North Dakota and other High Plains states are well-positioned to lead the charge. The best way forward is not to further subsidize wind farms -- Washington already does this through the 2.1 cent/kWh production tax credit -- but to level the playing field with coal by adding an emissions charge to fossil fuel prices.

You have to marvel, then, at the passivity of the state's senators in the ongoing debate over climate legislation. As Bill Chameides of Duke's Nicholas Center on the Environment reported recently, Sen. Kent Conrad has been far more focused on preserving jobs in the state's oil, gas, and agricultural sectors than in helping wind energy compete with dirty coal. His fellow Democrat, Sen. Bryan Dorgan, has inveighed against the cap-and-trade architecture in the Kerry-Boxer bill, warning that "the Wall Street crowd can't wait to sink their teeth into a new trillion-dollar trading market in which hedge funds and investment banks would trade and speculate on carbon credits and securities." Yet Dorgan has offered no alternative means of putting a price on carbon emissions, without which development of wind farms and other clean energy will remain at a snail's pace.

There is a path to a carbon price without Wall Street speculation, of course, and that's a carbon tax that's raised steadily and predictably over time. Distributing the revenues raised by the carbon tax to households on an equal, per capita basis, as Alaska has done for decades with its North Slope oil revenues, would protect families against the rise in energy prices and also ensure that "big government" gets no bigger -- both major concerns in the Plains States as elsewhere.

A revenue-neutral carbon tax, or carbon fee-and-dividend as some prefer to call it, would seem to be just the ticket for Senators from wind-rich states who rightly fear climate change and market speculation. North and South Dakota both celebrated their 120th anniversary last week as members of the union. What better way to harken back to that independent pioneer spirit than to spit in the face of the special interests and help a revenue-neutral carbon tax win a place in the national climate policy debate?

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This post was co-written by Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign.

We’re celebrating great news out of Minnesota and South Dakota this week:

After almost five years of planning and permitting efforts, the participating utilities in the proposed Big Stone II Project announced ... Monday that they will end their quest to build the project’s large coal-fired power plant and associated transmission facilities.

We echo our own Cesia Kearns, a Sierra Club staffer from Minnesota, in what the halting of Big Stone II means for the region.

The failure of this enormous proposed coal plant expansion unravels the myth that the Midwest is starving for more electricity, and that coal is the only way to adequately meet that perceived need. This victory demonstrates that even when we may lose the battles -- consistent pressure, engaged citizens, and strong partnerships can win the war. It's a strong example of how even though the regulators may be on the side of a developer, the public is not.

We salute our tough band of local residents in South Dakota and Minnesota (the plant was proposed for northeastern South Dakota, near the border with Minnesota), who spent the last five years fighting this dirty coal plant. The Sierra Club also partnered with grassroots, state, and regional organizations during this long and difficult campaign. They knew how bad the air pollution and global warming contributions this plant would spew forth would be, they wanted clean energy for their region, and even when the going got tough, they never gave up.

Stopping the Big Stone II project prevented about 4.7 million tons of CO2, or the equivalent of the pollution from roughly 670,000 cars (substantially more than all the cars in South Dakota) from entering the atmosphere every year.

The residents so entrenched in this fight against Big Stone II helped lead a long fight against the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission for its issuance of an air pollution permit for the plant and, equally important, an enforcement action targeting the existing coal-fired unit at the Big Stone facility for past violations of the Clean Air Act.   We also challenged the state of South Dakota's Clean Air Act plan for failure to comply with federal law.

Kearns added that one noteworthy example of the grassroots push for clean energy was the mention of Sierra Club's "footprint petition" in the administrative law judge's written recommendation to the Minn. Public Utilities Commission to deny the certificate of need for Big Stone II’s transmission lines.

“The footprint petition was a long swath of fabric with the signatures and outlines of the footprints of over 2,000 Minnesotans who wanted to see global warming solutions in Minnesota,” explained Kearns. “It was presented to the administrative law judge during a public hearing in Ortonville, Minn. -- the town closest to the location of the proposed plant.”

This plant’s demise is also a sign of impending climate legislation. Otter Tail Power had pulled out of this plant back in September, citing, among other reasons, “a high level of uncertainty associated with proposed federal climate legislation and existing federal environmental regulation.”

No other utilities stepped in to take over the Big Stone II expansion themselves -- because the companies all know that this legislation is coming.

Coal power is not the future of U.S. energy.The public is speaking up for more clean energy. And from coast to coast, that voice is getting louder every day.

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What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Last week, blasting began on Coal River Mountain in West Virginia. This is a part of the country where dynamite routinely goes off—turning the region’s historic mountain ranges into dust for the tiny coal seams that lie beneath their surface.

But Coal River Mountain is special, or, rather, you can decide whether it becomes special. Right now, Coal River Mountain represents the best and worst our country has to offer. It is one of the most dangerous examples of blasting for dirty coal and one of the most profound examples of hope that exist in our country. It is a crossroads.

Coal River Mountain can be a wind farm that provides 85,000 households with electricity, creates 700 long-term green jobs, gives back $1.7 million in annual county taxes and stands as a model for clean energy across coal country. Or, it can be a 6,000-acre dirty energy wasteland.

Stretching across thousands of acres of diverse and pristine hardwood forests, Coal River Mountain is one of the last intact mountains in the vicinity. It is also home to some of the few remaining headwater streams that have not been polluted with heavy metal-laden mine waste. To local residents, the mountain is a last stand.

When blasting began on Coal River Mountain this week, explosives began going off less than 100 yards from the largest coal sludge impoundment in the country. To put this in perspective, we are talking about more than eight billion gallons of coal slurry held back by an earthen dam. Were the dam to fail, and it has happened in the past, hundreds of people would have less than five minutes to save their lives.

It’s unfathomable to think that there are people in Coal River Valley who went to sleep last night fearful that a tidal wave of toxic coal sludge could break down their door. Or, it should be.

But almost as hard to fathom is why any political leader paying attention would allow a coal company to obliterate intact mountain ranges, sacrifice precious drinking water or risk losing people to a tsunami of coal sludge, when the mountain could be a wind farm instead?

Coal River Mountain’s real economic worth isn’t underground, but up in the sky. It is for this reason that Coal River Mountain is a major test for our country’s climate and energy future. It’s not that we lack alternatives to fossil fuels. It’s that while our nation’s leaders debate which solutions to put in place and at what rate and by what time, the fossil fuel industry continues to build more pipelines, belch out more pollution, and destroy more mountains. We are moving backwards even as we talk of a better future. But we don’t have to be.

In the last several months, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken some good steps to curb mountaintop removal mining, largely through strict oversight of mining permits. But now it’s time for leaps.

To save Coal River Mountain and preserve our nation’s clean energy potential, it’s critical that the Obama Administration, in particular the EPA, the Council for Environmental Quality and the Army Corps of Engineers, hear from all of us to counter the pressure that they are getting from coal lobbyists and coal industry-pocketed politicians. The Obama Administration can and will intervene if we decide that Coal River Mountain is where we draw a line in the sand.

Over the next two days, Credo Mobile, Sierra Club, NRDC, 350.org, the Center for Biological Diversity, Appalachian Voices and Rainforest Action Network among others have asked our supporters to contact those in the Obama Administration who have the power to immediately stop the blasting on Coal River Mountain and to protect our clean energy resources. With your help we can build the national outcry necessary for immediate action.

I was going to tell you that there are two important reasons to help save Coal River Mountain: because people are in danger, and because we are blowing up, literally dynamiting, one of our most promising sources of energy. But really, the most important reason for you to act is because you can. It is time stop talking about a clean energy future and start living in a clean energy present.

To help save Coal River Mountain and protect our clean energy resources visit, www.savecoalrivermountain.org.

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency still does not know the exact number of coal ash dumps at the nation's power plants, but it's moving ahead with plans to regulate them.

Those are among the findings of a report [PDF] released last week by the Government Accountability Office on the status of EPA's efforts to improve oversight of coal combustion waste. The GAO is an independent, nonpartisan watchdog agency that serves Congress.

The report was prepared in response to a request from U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Their request came following the December 2008 coal ash spill disaster from a surface impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston plant in eastern Tennessee.

That spill covered more than 300 acres with toxic waste, destroyed three homes and damaged 23 others, damaged nearby roads and rail lines, and sent toxic pollution into the nearby Emory River. TVA has estimated it could cost as much as $1.2 billion to clean up the mess and take up to three years.

As of mid-September, the EPA had identified over 580 coal ash waste surface impoundments nationwide, GAO reports. A surface impoundment is a depression, excavation, or diked area where the liquid coal waste is stored. Sometimes the solids in the waste are left to accumulate in the impoundment, while in other cases they are dredged periodically and taken to another disposal unit, such as a landfill.

Coal ash is also disposed of through minefilling, where it's dumped into abandoned mines. And a significant amount of the coal combustion waste produced at power plants goes to manufacture products such as cement and wallboard or structural fill for roads and other development, an application known under the law as "beneficial use."

Of the 131 million tons of coal combustion waste generated by U.S. utilities in 2007, 38 percent went toward so-called beneficial uses, 36 percent into landfills, 21 percent into surface impoundments, and 5 percent into mines, according to the GAO. Between 2000 and 2006 alone, power companies reported dumping into surface impoundments and landfills coal ash waste containing more than 124 million pounds of six toxic pollutants: arsenic, chromium, lead, nickel, selenium, and thallium.

Among the risks associated with surface impoundments are collapses such as the one at the Kingston plant; the leaching of coal ash contaminants such as arsenic, chromium, and lead into surface or groundwater supplies; and the discharge of wastewater containing coal ash contamination into rivers and other surface water supplies.

Following the Kingston disaster, the EPA sent out information requests to 162 electric generation facilities and 61 corporate offices in an efforts to gather information on coal waste surface impoundments. It's created a database with information on 584 surface impoundments or similar facilities in 35 states -- but the EPA says this number is likely to change as it conducts site visits.

Over the past 10 years, 26 facilities have reported spills or other unpermitted releases from a total of 35 surface impoundments. EPA has also identified 49 impoundments that have a high hazard potential rating, meaning that a failure would probably kill people.

The EPA is further assessing these potentially dangerous units. It's also considering whether to regulate the structural integrity of coal ash waste surface impoundments through wastewater discharge permits -- a move that came one day after three environmental groups announced they planned to sue the agency for failing to properly regulate such discharges.

The EPA recently completed a study of toxins in wastewater discharges from coal ash impoundments [PDF]. It concluded that current guidelines should be revised because of the significant toxic releases from impoundments and the likelihood that these will increase significantly over the next few years as new air pollution controls are installed.

The GAO report looked at federal oversight issues that still need to be resolved as EPA develops proposed regulations for coal ash waste disposal. It noted that while the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 is the key federal law regulating hazardous waste, a 1980 amendment to the law sponsored by now-deceased Congressman Tom Bevill (D-Ala.) exempted coal combustion waste from RCRA.

EPA is considering several options for regulating the material:

* Regulating the waste as hazardous under RCRA Subtitle C. While supported by environmental groups, this approach is opposed by the industry because of the potential cost and complexity.

* Regulating the waste as non-hazardous solid waste under RCRA Subtitle D. This approach is supported by industry but opposed by environmental groups because EPA could not routinely inspect disposal sites or require permits and because the opportunity for public involvement in permits would be limited.

* A hybrid approach in which the material would be regulated as ordinary solid waste under certain conditions or a hazardous waste under others, such as designating wet disposal in surface impoundments as hazardous and dry waste in landfills as non-hazardous.

Lisa Evans, a coal ash expert with the environmental law firm Earthjustice, told the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette's Coal Tattoo Blog that she had concerns about the hybrid regulatory approach, noting that dry disposal of coal ash waste also presents significant risks to health and the environment:

... [I]t would be a big mistake for EPA to leave landfilling entirely to the states. Current state laws are inadequate, and they will likely remain inadequate without EPA's hazardous designation.

EPA plans to issue its proposed rule on coal ash disposal next month.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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It's funny how these embarrassing announcements always come on late Friday afternoon.

While anti-mountaintop removal protests spread across the nation and at the EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. last Friday, a legal representative for the Department of Interior checked the empty parking lot of the National Press Club and then scurried over to the dark corridors of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., and filed the DOI's intention to consider a revision of the blatant Bush-era hijacking of the 25-year-old stream buffer zone rule, which was intended to stop mine waste from being dumped within a 100 feet of streams ... in 2011.

Wow, cracking down on mountaintop removal by 2011?

Hold on a minute, says Bush-relic and Acting OSMRE director Glenda Owens. In her statement to the District Court, she resolutely declared, "it would be premature at this point to speculate on a timeline for completion of any final rule."

Noting that 1,400 miles of streams have been directly impacted by coal mining waste in Kentucky alone, Teri Blanton, of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, asks: "In the meantime, what is the DOI's interim plan? Without the Clean Water Protection Act, what rule is going to be protecting the streams now? Where is the sound science in two more years of unchecked destruction of the streams."

A critical process in mountaintop removal operations, the dumping of coal mining waste has jammed and sullied an estimated 2,000 miles of streams in the Appalachian mountain region headwaters and waterways.

As the DOI tarries, the plunder of Appalachia for the small seams of needless coal will continue unabated, despite Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's statement in June that, "The steps we are taking today are a firm departure from the previous administration's approach to mountaintop coal mining, which failed to protect our communities, water, and wildlife in Appalachia."

Million of pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives detonate daily across the lush Appalachian mountains through needless mountaintop removal operations -- including the clean energy landmark of Coal River Mountain.

Owens, a career bureaucrat who infamously defended George Bush's disastrous mining policy on mountaintop removal operations, is still sorta figuring out the OSMRE's ruling on the "approximate original contour" -- 32 years after the passing of SMCRA. Her testimony at the Congressional hearings for the 30th anniversary of SMCRA in 2007 is now considered notoriously out of touch with coalfield realities.

In effect, Owens' embarrassing statement to the U.S. District Court last Friday is a wakeup call on why Friend of Big Coal Joseph Pizarchik's [video] nomination for directorship of the demoralized OMSRE agency in charge of administrating the rules of the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act has been blocked in the Senate.

Given his disingenuous testimony on mountaintop removal at his nomination hearing, Pizarchik would simply continue the OMSRE lackluster reign of errors and delay.

According to the Alliance for Appalachia: "In April 2009, DOI Secretary Salazar requested that the Stream Buffer Zone Rule change be vacated; this decision was applauded by groups working to protect Appalachian streams and communities. This recent decision by the Department of the Interior appears to run counter to the Department's earlier actions and statements, including those outlined in a June inter-agency Memorandum of Understanding."

When a federal court rejected the DOI's initial attempt to reverse the Bush-era changes this summer, the cowed DOI pitifully responded that it was "determined to improve mining practices and we will do so within the context of the court's ruling, which we are reviewing."

The Sierra Club points out that the DOI is spinning its wheels.

In the meantime, as the DOI flounders, lobby efforts by coalfield residents and national clean water advocates continue to appeal to the EPA, and to members of the U.S. Congress to pass the Clean Water Protection Act and the Appalachian Restoration Act.

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If only they'd known how right they were ...

Washington State Historical Society

Thanks to reader Bill Broadhead for digging this gem out of the Washington State Historical Society's excellent digital collections. Here's the full description: "A rectangular piece of coal in a wagon is on display in the middle of Pacific Avenue in Tacoma before the arrival of President Harrison in May, 1891. A sign behind the wagon reads, We Can Warm the World on Coal. A group of men stand on either side of the wagon in front of S.J. Holland's and Murray's Drug Store."

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I want to draw attention to one of the gravest -- but least publicized -- environmental crimes of our times. It is one of brutal violence, utter waste, and total disregard for the planet's resources. Millions of unwitting Americans are complicit in the destruction each year, as evidenced by the burning lights spread across the otherwise dark night.

Worse, the devastating effects on the surrounding communities and ecosystems are hushed by the cruel corporatism wrapped around this crime. Once beautiful curves rising out of the landscape, now at their peak in breathtaking seasonal colors, are chopped off, their "fill" dumped carelessly at the wayside.

Stop the horrors of pumpkintop removal!Tonya RicksIf you aren't familiar with this heartless crime against nature, allow me to introduce you to the horrors of ... pumpkintop removal.

Yes, every year field upon field of ripe pumpkins, bright orange jewels of the autumn landscape, have their peaks hacked off and their rich, wholesome innards scooped out and cast away. The pumpkin -- the most beloved of squashes, and yet, the most abused. Why not turn them to better uses, such as warm and delicious pumpkin and white bean chili?

Most people haven't a clue about the seasonality of food, but they know what time of year to expect this godly gourd. Another lesson lost in eating seasonally and locally! Instead, so many of us choose to bulldoze pumpkin tops and stab and scrape out the flesh, with little regard for its value beyond a few roasted seeds. Most often, these vibrant veggie globes are reduced to hollowed-out shells of their former selves, offering nothing more than a gruesome, flickering smile.

OK, so the real and insidious threat cloaked in the night is probably not pumpkintop removal. However, the terrors I described are very genuine for many people living in the hollows of Appalachia, those who have to deal with the effects of mountaintop removal coal mining. Mountain peaks are leveled off and their guts (minus thin layers of coal) tossed in valleys and streams, raising the risks of flash floods and leaching chemical and heavy metal pollution into streams that are the source of drinking water for thousands. On top of all this, local residents are forced to live with the bone-rattling blasts as the mountaintops fall around them.

And the spookiest part is that all of this is legal in the United States. Is there a more frightening story I could tell this Halloween?

(Because I don't want to give anyone nightmares, I will note that, after intense pressure on their part, anti-mountaintop removal activists feel the tide is beginnning to turn in favor of ending this destructive practice.) But let's not forget that the scariest ghost stories of all are the ones that are true.

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